


Soothsayer, Breadbaker

by YellowLion



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Oneshot, Other, Spoilers for The Eleventh Hour, Taako is briefly mentioned, The Eleventh Hour, burn injury mention, just some speculation on the crystals and paloma's life, scars mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 07:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9593234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YellowLion/pseuds/YellowLion
Summary: Paloma remembers. Paloma forgets. Paloma remembers.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Quick rundown, there's a burn injury mention and scars mentioned, though they aren't from self-harm.

The sky glittered, and the world smelled like baking bread. 

 

She had always baked, in the way that Grandmas tended to never tell exactly when they learned to do Grandma things. She still had faint white scars on her palms from all the burns she had learned to take with a smile, so different yet so similar to the scars crossing her back in a tapestry detailing a life long lived upon a barren earth. She still remembered the weight of a greataxe against those scars. 

 

She had always baked, but not always well. She had had to train patiently, the charred smell filling her nose again and again as she taught herself. She had never been the patient type till then, learning many things as she woke before dawn and fell asleep past sun’s setting, pride too stubborn to let her quit. She remembered the first good thing she had baked, the taste of fresh blueberries always calling to the memory.

 

She remembered how she had looked up as she learned, each day adding a new crystal hanging from the ceiling. The first had come at the end of a long journey, before she had built her home by hand. She remembered how the crystal had been so quiet in her mind, a gentle silence that calmed her and kept her from allowing worry to overtake her. The others came after, and they each had their own voices. Small ones were usually cheerful, humming little songs and laughing, because they wanted to break and knew they would be of use soon. They welcomed shattering with open arms, singing so sweetly as they fell. The bigger ones were always worried, some less than others, that they would tell of endings. They did not want to tell of death, of the world’s slow suffering. They calmed over time, learning so few would need to use them. They stayed with her for years, soothing her, learning to love the quiet bustle of her baking to distract them from their prophecies. No crystal ever knew before it was shattered what it would tell, because crystals only housed the magic of telling. 

 

She knew not why they continued to appear to her, only that they had begun because of the Silent One, the First. She stopped wondering why no one had yet shattered it, only that the magic knew which crystals would be needed.

 

The drops fell like tears, and the world was rewound. Again, again, again.

 

She did not remember that, not until the world was torn apart.

 

This was when she remembered, and she watched her own memories play back again as the First had spoke within her for the first time, a simple, “Goodbye Paloma.” Then it had fallen and she spoke, she spoke of worlds ending, of worlds reborn and a prophecy that had left her lifeless as an elven man looked on--she had been unable to gather the courage to ask him what it had meant. She never knew what these things meant.

 

She had smiled as she gave him her basket, had seen the world right itself again.

 

She feared for the world, knew that though Refuge had been saved, not all was well.

 

The sky fractured, and the world was losing something important.

 

Something was coming, and she worried.


End file.
